Archives For xoom

Playing Nintendo games on the Xoom using a Wii remote

March 26, 2011 — 7 Comments

I did this a while back on the Droid X, but I just realized it would probably work on the Xoom — and it does!

You can play any of your old NES games on the Xoom (or any other android phone/tablet, probably), using the Wii remote to control them.  There are two apps required to make this happen:

1 – Wiimote Controller: This is a free app that connects your Wii Remote to your Android device via Bluetooth. You can find it in the market here for free.

2 – NESoid: This is the app that actually runs the games.  You’ll need to find and load your own NES rom files, though.  It has a lite version available for free, or a paid version for just $3.98.

Here’s a quick video of it in action:

In the video I mentioned the HDMI output from the Xoom, which you can read more about here.

There are other emulators you can get (Super Nintendo, Genesis, etc), but the Wii Remote works perfectly with NES games because of the button layout, and I simply prefer those games anyhow.

If you have any kind of Android device and a Wii Remote, give it a try!

In Games, Mobile, Technology , , , ,
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Where I use my tablet

March 14, 2011 — 1 Comment

I’ve had many people ask the same question about the Xoom and the iPad 2 – “when would I use it?”. Here’s a few answers:

  1. In front of the tv. When I take a few minutes to chill in the evening, the tablet is much easier to use from a recliner then a phone or a laptop. On the other hand, Don Reisinger at SlashGear just posted why his iPad 2 is not very useful in the living room, so your mileage may vary.
  2. At sports practice. While most tablets (including the iPad 2 and the Xoom) are very difficult to see when you’re outdoors, tablets work great for indoor sports.  In particular, I find it quite useful when my girls are at taekwondo a couple times each week.
  3. At lunch meetings. Great tool to work through concepts with a client, since you can show PDFs, browse web sites, etc.
  4. At McDonald’s. My kids are in the play area as we speak!
  5. In the car. I’ve had a few times when I’ve been in the car (not driving — in a parking lot, post-meeting or picking up my daughter from preschool) and saw a semi-important email come through on my phone. It’d be too slow and cumbersome to dig out the laptop, but very easy to pull out the tablet, look at the document/website, and hammer out a quick reply. Google video chat over 3G from a parking lot has been useful (and surprisingly high quality) as well. This also works if your spouse is driving and you need to work on something while you travel.
  6. At church. Our minister (@IkeReighard) uses his iPad as his Bible when he preaches (he’s mentioned he loves the ability to use a huge font), and he encourages us to “take out your Bibles, iPads, Androids…” as he shares scripture.  Being able to quickly bookmark passages from the Xoom is pretty slick, and our church is working on setting up YouVersion Live for the church in the near future.

I think it’d also be quite useful in classroom settings and office meetings, though a laptop might be preferred for the faster input with a keyboard.

Where can’t you use it? Outside, pretty much ever. I had dreams of using it on the back deck, but unless it’s quite shady out it’s hard to see the screen. Even in the car can be a challenge unless you can get some good shade on your side.

Realize that these are all places where I would have used my phone in the past, and the phone is still a solid solution. The tablet just makes it easier. As I’ve said before, it’s mostly about convenience. For example, I wouldn’t have written this post from McDonald’s on my phone — I would have simply waited until I got home.

Where do you (or would you) use your tablet?

In Mobile, Productivity , , , , , ,
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Weatherbug for Honeycomb finally hits the market

March 10, 2011 — Leave a comment

Before the Xoom was released, there were a few cools apps that were shown off for it.  In particular, I remember seeing CNN, Sports Illustrated, Words with Friends and Weatherbug.

Prior to today, CNN is the only one that launched their official (and very slick) Honeycomb app.  However, Weatherbug just brought theirs out and it’s been worth the wait.  It’s really nothing more than weather information, but it’s presented in a very tablet-friendly format, and includes a nice widget that works like the built-in “books” widget, where you can flick through weather information for a variety of cities.

Still waiting on Sports Illustrated and Words With Friends to come out with their Honeycomb-optimized versions, but it should be soon.

You can get WeatherBug in the market here (for free), read more over on Droid Life, or check out the gallery below.

In Mobile, Technology , , , , , , ,
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Should you get a netbook or a tablet?

March 9, 2011 — 5 Comments

Netbook or tablet?

With all of my talk about the Motorola Xoom lately, you’d think my answer would be “tablet”, but it’s not that easy to say.  For the past year, I’ve had an Acer netbook that has been an awesome little device to carry around.  Similar to most tablets, it’s very portable and has an amazing battery life.  However, I’ve been using it a lot less now that I have the Xoom, so what would I recommend to someone that has neither?

90%

The problem with a tablet (from any manufacturer) is that it can only do about 90% of what I need.  That might sound like a lot, and it is, but that other 10% can be critical.  If a client sends me an image to post on their site, it can be tough to get it from your email up to a website while you’re on a tablet.  With a netbook it’s a breeze.  This is why when I bring my tablet to lunch meetings, I also keep the netbook in the car in case I need it.

Cover the basics first

With that in mind, I think most people need a netbook/laptop before they should worry about a tablet.  I’m finding that the Xoom is amazingly useful, and I’ve put a lot of mileage on it already, but it won’t replace my laptop for quite a while.  I think most people will find a few small areas where the tablet makes things difficult and having a netbook handy would be quite useful.  With prices around $200, netbooks don’t cost much and can accomplish quite a bit.

I was recently talking to a friend that was debating between a laptop and an iPad 2, and we eventually decided that for the price of an iPad 2 she could get a netbook and a used first-generation iPad.  For a lot of people, that might make the most sense.

Convenience can be money

The tablet is really about convenience.  I don’t think anyone would argue that.  Compare any decent laptop to any decent tablet, and the laptop is far more functional and likely costs less.  However, the tablet is easier to use on the couch, at a meeting with a client, waiting for my kids at taekwondo, etc.  It’s great for that.  But is convenience worth money?  It depends who you are.

I pride myself on solid productivity.  My systems aren’t perfect, but I always work to make things a bit smoother.  A tablet helps with that.

In most cases, the tablet doesn’t replace my laptop; it replaces my phone.  I love my phone, but a tablet is much easier to get work done on.  In the places where I use it (again, lunches, taekwondo, etc) I’m much more efficient that if I only had my phone.  Suppose it saves me one hour per week.  That’s 52 hours/year.  If your time is worth more than $10/hour, your tablet has effectively paid for itself.

So, netbook or tablet?

It’s not a question that can easily be answered, but for most people the answer is netbook.  However, if you already have a functional netbook (laptop, whatever), then a tablet might be a great device to compliment it.  If you’re at that stage, deciding which tablet to get can be a tough decision as well.  Check out my Xoom vs. iPad 2 post for some direction, but there’s no clear-cut answer there, either.

What do you think? Do you have a netbook, tablet, both or neither?  Why?

In Mobile, Technology , , , , , ,
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Pushing your Xoom or iPad 2 to the TV

March 4, 2011 — 3 Comments

If you already read my post comparing the Xoom to the iPad 2 and you still are trying to decide, here is a bit more food for thought.

One of the cool new features in the Motorola Xoom and the Apple iPad 2 is the HDMI-out connection.  Run a cable from your tablet to the TV, and it’s a mirror image of what you see on your device! Better yet, because HDMI carries audio with it, all of the sound goes to the TV too.

The Xoom and iPad 2 handle it very similarly, but they each have one nice advantage over the other:

  • The resolution of the Xoom (1280×720, not counting the 80px black bar at the bottom) is exactly what a 720p signal is.  This means that when you hook it up to your big screen, it gives you a full-resolution 720p picture of your tablet, which is really sweet.  By comparison, the iPad doesn’t fill the entire screen, leaving black bars on the sides.
  • The iPad supports rotation — if you’re connected to the TV and you rotate your iPad, the picture on the screen rotates as well.  By comparison, the Xoom simply disables rotation while connected to a TV.  It wouldn’t work very well with it anyhow, so it was a wise move.

Why connect it to a TV?

A few reasons come to mind:

  • Presentations: Push a Powerpoint or a Prezi through there. Since most projectors now have HDMI as well, it could handle those cases too.
  • Video chat: I got my parents on there the other day, and the kids thought it was pretty fun! The only drawback is that the kids were looking at the TV, rather than the video camera on the Xoom.
  • Fun: C’mon, Angry Birds in 52″ is pretty sweet!

Here’s a quick video of how it works:

So which one works better?

While I prefer the way the Xoom handles it, the extra apps on the iPad would be quite useful.  In particular, I really enjoy using Prezi for presentations, but they don’t have a Xoom app yet.  Pushing one of those straight from the iPad to a projector would be awesome.  It’s coming to Android eventually, but probably not anytime soon.

One other slight edge for the Xoom is that it uses a standard mini-HDMI cable whereas Apple requires you to purchase a $39 adapter first. Not a big deal, but a bit of an inconvenience.

The bottom line is that this is simply a cool feature, and I’m glad that both products offer it.

In Technology , , , ,
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Motorola Xoom vs. the Apple iPad 2

March 2, 2011 — 22 Comments

After much speculation and debate, the iPad 2 was finally unveiled.  As most people had predicted, it was a very nice update, but nothing was really groundbreaking.  It’s now thinner, faster, and has front and rear-facing cameras.  The software, screen and price are essentially the same.

On the flip side, I picked up a Xoom last week and I’ve been quite impressed with it.  So which one should you get?  Read on to help make that decision.

The Specs

Comparing the 32GB 3G iPad to the Xoom brings you two very similar tablets.

  • Connection: Both support wifi and 3G, but the Xoom will support 4G in a few months.  Edge: Xoom
  • RAM: The iPad has 512MB, the Xoom has 1GB.  While this appears to be an edge for the Xoom, the iPad has never had an issue bogging down, so I don’t think sheer numbers mean too much here.  Edge: Even
  • Cameras: Both have a front and rear-facing camera, though the Xoom has higher quality cameras in both places.  However, I don’t think you’ll see much difference in day-to-day use.  Edge: Even
  • Screen: While the iPad 3 is rumored to have a much higher-res screen, right now they’re pretty similar.  The iPad is 9.7″ at 1024×768 and the Xoom is 10.1″ at 1280×800.  It’s not much of a difference, but it means that the Xoom can play 720p video right on the device and the iPad can’t.  Slight Edge: Xoom
  • Apps: The native Honeycomb apps are quite awesome (Gmail, CNN, YouTube, etc), but there aren’t many of them yet.  People estimate around 100 tablet-ready apps for the Xoom, and around 65,000 for the iPad.  Even if the email and browser are much better on the Xoom (and they are), and you know they’ll have a ton of apps pretty soon, numbers don’t lie.  Edge: iPad
  • Multi-tasking: While both devices handle multi-tasking, it’s much more friendly on the Xoom.  Not only is the task-switching much easier, but the notifications are handled way better.  This is rumored to be fixed in iOS 5, but for now Edge: Xoom
  • Connectivity: Both devices have full HDMI out (which is way cool), but the Xoom does it with a normal mini-HDMI cable.  In addition, it has a standard USB cable, can add storage via MicroSD, and gets updates over-the-air.  Edge: Xoom
  • Music/Movies: While the Xoom has a greatly improved music player and the screen resolution was born for high-def movies, Apple has this area locked up for now with the excellent apps included with the iPad.  Edge: iPad
  • Battery Life: They can both go for about 10 hours, which is pretty awesome.  Edge: Even
  • Video chat: The iPad can do FaceTime and the Xoom can do Google Video Chat, so that’s kind of a toss up.  However, the Xoom can do chat over wifi or 3G, and the iPad is 3G only.  I didn’t think this would matter much, as I expected 3G video chat to be pretty choppy, but it’s shockingly smooth.  Edge: Xoom

Other Xoom Advantages

  • Homescreen widgets — Get a live look at your email, calendar, weather, etc, without having to open each app individually.
  • Notifications — As mentioned in the “multi-tasking” above, the notification system on Android has always been far better than iOS, and it’s even better now in Honeycomb.
  • Great phone app handling — The Xoom handles phone-based apps much better than the iPad handles iPhone-based apps. However, considering the iPad has 65,000 apps, the Xoom had better do something like this to balace it out a little bit.
  • Tethering — If you get the 3G package on the Xoom, you can tether that connection to any other device for free.  Just be careful not to use up too much data.

Other iPad 2 Advantages

  • Screen protector — It’s not a huge deal, but that screen protector thing they unveiled with the iPad 2 looks pretty slick.
  • Stability — Honeycomb is quite stable and rarely crashes, but iOS is rock solid.

So which one should I get?

That’s not an easy decision.  I always bring it back to email.  If you use Gmail, it’s 100x better on Android.  If you use any other email system, then they’re about the same on both systems and you’ll need other metrics to decide.  I find that the Xoom is more of a workhorse (multitasking, etc), and the iPad is more fun to play with (more games).

I think most people would be quite happy with either device.  I’m thrilled with my Xoom, and wrote most of this blog entry on it.  However, my wife prefers iOS over Android so if she ever gets a tablet it’ll almost certainly be an iPad.

While it’s almost certain that the iPad will outsell everyone else this year, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best.

What do you think? Plan on picking up either tablet any time soon?

In Technology , , , , , , ,
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My first thoughts on the Motorola Xoom

February 28, 2011 — 14 Comments

As many of you know, I picked up a Motorola Xoom from Verizon last Thursday.  It runs the latest version of Google’s Android Operating system, version 3.0, known as “Honeycomb”. The timing worked out well, because I had my wisdom teeth taken out Friday morning and was laid up in the recliner all day with the Xoom at my side.  A netbook or phone would have worked in that case as well, but a tablet works so much better.

So what do I think?

For starters, I love it, but it’s not perfect.  There are a few missing pieces that will be fixed in future updates — sd card, Flash, 4G support — and a variety of minor bugs.  The biggest problem at this point is a lack of tablet-focused apps.  It handles the Android phone apps quite well, but there’s a big difference between a scaled up phone app and a native tablet app.  The Xoom handles phone apps better than the iPad does, but the iPad has about zillion iPad-specific apps, making it the clear winner in that category.

Video Review

Here’s a quick video to show you around the system:

Battery Life

While I’m sure there will be some official tests, but Friday gave me a chance to give it a good run for its money.  Laying in the recliner all day, the Xoom was on my lap about 90% of the time, and running about 75% of the time.  After 10 hours of email, browsing, various apps, watching some videos and doing some video chat, the battery was down to 36%.  That seems pretty good to me!

Compared to the iPad?

The Xoom is better than the existing iPad in almost every way — larger screen, higher resolution, faster processor, dual cameras, more memory, etc.  However, the iPad 2 is set to be unveiled on Wednesday and will probably knock down a few of those, though they don’t have a release date set for it.  I’m thinking it’ll probably be a few months before it comes out, but we’ll find out soon.  At that point, the Xoom should have sd card and Flash support, and many more apps will have been written to take advantage of the tablet format.  The battle between the iPad and the various Honeycomb tablets should be fun to watch, and we’ll all benefit from the added features that both sides develop.

Should I buy one?

For most people I’d at least wait two more days to see what the iPad 2 has to offer.  I’m expecting that I’ll continue to suggest Honeycomb/Xoom as the tablet to get, but you never know what Apple might come up with. Much like my initial reasons for switching from the iPhone to the Nexus One, email is one of the top criteria.  The iPad email is certainly solid, but if you use Gmail it’s a much better experience in Honeycomb.

Do you have a tablet yet?  Looking to buy one soon? Leave a comment and share your thoughts!

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Why don’t you have an iPad?

February 9, 2011 — 3 Comments

I enjoy tech gadgets, and I tend to have quite a few of them.  I have a variety of computers, a Flip video camera, a Verizon Mifi, and I change phones fairly often.  With that in mind, people are often surprised I don’t have an iPad, so I thought I’d explain why.

The iPad

First off, the iPad is great!  I’ve used them before, they’re amazingly slick, and some of my favorite apps like Evernote and Nozbe look awesome on there.  There is no doubt that right now the iPad is the best tablet out there.  If I had to buy a tablet today, I’d certainly get an iPad.

Android

The holdup is Android.  I had an iPhone for a few years, but for most of that time I knew I’d switch to Android eventually.  I use Gmail a lot, and I knew that Gmail on Android would be far better than the mail app on iPhone — and I was right.  However, I was sticking with iPhone until a few things happened on Android:

  • Waiting for improvements to the Facebook app.  At the time, it was awful.
  • Waiting for the release of the Evernote app.
  • Waiting for the release of the Dropbox app.
  • Waiting for some kind of better Twitter app.

Eventually, all of those were met and I’ve moved over to Android and I’m (probably) never coming back.

DroidPad?

It’s been no secret that there are Android tablets coming out, and we even saw a few last year (like the Samsung Galaxy Tab).  However, they just weren’t very good.  I could have picked up an iPad at that point, but it would have been just like when I had an iPhone — counting down the days until there was a decent Android alternative.  The time has finally arrived.

The Motorola Xoom

For quite a while, I thought I’d be moving to a Notion Ink Adam.  It had the potential to be an awesome tablet, but it’s had shipping delays, screen problems and a host of other minor issues that held me back.

While I was debating whether or not to pre-order an Adam, news of the Motorola Xoom came out and my decision was made.  Despite a somewhat higher than anticipated price, the Xoom looks to be an amazing tablet.  You may have seen their Super Bowl ad, which clearly took some shots at Apple:

As with the phone, email is the killer app for me.  The Xoom has a crazy-good Gmail app, along with some impressive email widgets.  All in all, it should be a great machine.

It’s expected to be released on February 24, so look for a full review sometime after that.

Do you have an iPad?  Are you waiting for a Xoom?  Do you think tablets are a waste of money? Share your thoughts in the comments.

In Productivity, Technology , , , , , , , ,
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